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I find Mary Meeker's reports on internet trends very interesting. They're packed with interesting data and insights. I've been following her work closely. She recently published an updated overview of 2012 and I thought I'd share my highlights with you at the end of this year.

sheet 9: stunning slide showing shipment of iPads, iPhones and iPods over 10 years compared. This slides is old(er), but it just underlines the interesting times we live in
sheet 10: You thought the ramp up of Apple products is huge, well Android ramp up is 6 times that of iPhone
sheet 12: 30% of US adults own a tablet, less than 3 years ago that was 3%
sheet 17: mobile advertising is growing rapidly; $0.7 billion in 2008, $19 billion in 2012
sheet 18: 24% of online shopping was done via tablets on Black Saturday, versus 6% 2 years ago
sheet 20: we are in the midst of a huge change powered by new devices + connectivity + UI + beauty. Meeker highlights the effects for the pc, photography, phone, k…

Sometimes I read a post that really gets me thinking. Anil Dashes' recent post 'The web we lost' did it this time. I think reading the full post is well worth your time if you're interested in where the web is headed. Two fragments from the post triggered me the most:
We've lost key features that we used to rely on, and worse, we've abandoned core values that used to be fundamental to the web world. To the credit of today's social networks, they've brought in hundreds of millions of new participants to these networks, and they've certainly made a small number of people rich.

But they haven't shown the web itself the respect and care it deserves, as a medium which has enabled them to succeed. And they've now narrowed the possibilites of the web for an entire generation of users who don't realize how much more innovative and meaningful their experience could be.

(...)
The first step to disabusing them of this notion is for the people cre…

What social tools are young people using? As a (internal) social media advisor for several companies I'm very interested in the answer to this question. So, when I get a change to talk for students, I'm honored, but also very curious what they will tell me.

Recently I was asked to guest lecture for students at the Radboud University of Nijmegen. It's the university I went to years ago. I was asked to share my experience with using social media concepts and tools inside organizations. I basically used a shorter version of the slides I use for my guest lectures for a college, but spent more time on the conceptual, philosophical if you will, side of 'social'.
I also asked them which social tools they use and why they use them. What did they say? Here's what I learned (there were 40+ students attending my lecture):

None use Google+. Why? Nobody/none of their friends is there.All except 3 use Facebook. The 3 that didn't use FB, just didn't see the value of us…

You all know +Luis Suarez, right? The guy from IBM, that live on the Canary Islands and has declared war on email. Well recently I wanted to get in touch with him to discuss an opportunity that popped up. Contacting him is easy, right? He’s all over social media. Just DM him on Twitter, send a message via Google+ or Facebook. LinkedIn will do as well. I thought I’d share how it went. Did I seduce Luis to hand over his email address to me? But what to do if you want to send him a longer piece of text? Do you request for his email address? I was tempted to but refrained to ask because I knew I would be whipped by him. ;-) So I reached out to him via Twitter (direct message) and asked if we could call sometime soon. That was possible and we had a chat. But, still, I had to send him more information about the opportunity, about 10-15 lines of text. And I’m not going to chop this into 140 character messages. LinkedIn could work, but feels like email. I’m not connected to Luis in Facebook…

It’s that time of the year again when we look back and evaluate the year that has passed by so quickly. And lots like to make predictions for the year to come. I don’t want to share my predictions and my ponderings on the previous year. It has been an exciting year for me though. Many interesting projects, many interesting interactions with colleagues, customers and you. I moved from being a senior consultant to manager, visited interesting conferences, had discussions about and changes to the company I work for, etc. I’m just happy to have a great job, in times when many are looking for a job.

I would like to thank you for the previous year. For reading my blog, thinking about things I’ve shared with you and the interactions we’ve had here and elsewhere. I’m looking forward to 2013 and hope you are to.

In the past I’ve written quite a bit about expertise location and knowledge mapping. Expertise location is about supporting people to find people with certain expertise they’re looking for. In larger and multi-nationals organizations this is a big issue. One aspect about expertise location is also finding out where the person is. This can be a static location (e.g. the person works in room 3, building 4). This is difficult enough, but it can be done as I wrote some time ago.

However, the workforce is more mobile than ever. Less and less employees have a fixed space they’re working in daily. They work in several rooms in an office during the week, they work from home, in the car, etc. Supporting expertise location in this context is even harder. In theory it can be done. I wrote about this as well. But I never saw a company actually connect the dots and make it work. Until recently.

I had the pleasure to visit Qbengo. Qbengo is currently focused on connecting people at larger conferenc…

Maybe a better question is: why do I share? I was wondering about this while reading +Oscar Berg’s post ‘Why do people share?’.Oscar makes several interesting statements about sharing in his post. Like this one:
The act of sharing something tells our colleagues something about us and that we think and care about what they might be interested in. If what we share is relevant and valuable to them, they will understand that we have really tried to understand what their needs and interests are. Their trust in us grows.
And, citing from an MIT Sloan article about reputation and knowledge sharing:
Reputation also plays a role where rules or systems are unable to spur sharing. Because critical information is often held privately by individuals, workers often can choose to share or withhold such information in their interactions with colleagues without fear of sanction. That leaves reputation as a key motivator in any decision to share or withhold information.
Oscar also relates to the in…

Bribing the knowledge workers on whom these industries [of the Information Revolution] depend will therefore simply not work. The key knowledge workers in these businesses will surely continue to expect to share financially in the fruits of their labor. But the financial fruits are likely to take much longer to ripen, if they ripen at all. And then, probably within ten years or so, running a business with (short-term) "shareholder value" as its first—if not its only—goal and justification will have become counterproductive. Increasingly, performance in these new knowledge-based industries will come to depend on running the institution so as to attract, hold, and motivate knowledge workers. When this can no longer be done by satisfying knowledge workers' greed, as we are now trying to do, it will have to be done by satisfying their values, and by giving them social recognition and social power. It will have to be done by turning them from subordinates into fellow executi…

What's the real problem underlying information overload? Nathan Zeldes has been finding answers to this question for years. Recently he wrote a must-read post on the answers he found. There are all kinds of reasons we keep on using email in an unproductive way. But the underlying issue, according to Zeldes, is mistrust. To solve the information overload problem within organizations we need to address this "dark side" of overload. If we don't we'll never structurally solve the problem. Address this dark side and change the underlying culture, Zeldes advises.

I agree this is a way to fundamentally root out mistrust. But what if this is not possible? What if the company just doesn't see the problem and therefore does not want to spend time on this extermination process?
I think every person can start by settting an example. Be counter-cultural! Show how the way you use email is more effective and productive. It's the long bottom-up approach, but this road em…

James Dellow has a nice post researching the history of email and why email is so successful. More importantly he wonders what this means for social tools and their success. He concludes his post with the following:
Enterprise social software can also learn some important lessons from email:We need interoperability between enterprise social systems.Users prefer standardised interfaces.It needs to be cost effective to own and operate.
Far from being a nemesis, email and enterprise social software are more likely to form a strong symbiotic relationship.
I've been thinkings and blogging about this topic quite a bit as well. I did research and product concept development on document management tools in the past. One of the things we said back then is: integrate document management into email. I think this principle still applies. I also think the killer social tools will be deeply integrated into/with email. For that reason I think Google+ has a good chance of winning the social game.…

Next keynote at the Copywriting & Content Marketing conference is by Robert Rose.

Marketing processes have changed. All content people are now marketeers. Why? Marketing is not only responsible for leads and visitors, but also for retention, satisfaction and upselling. We need to work towards customers that will defend us to death (evangelism).

Buyers used to solve their problems and that's how they bought products. "People don't notice ads, they notice what interests them and sometimes its an ad." (Gossage)
But buyers have changed due to the internet. Audiences now filter. Email and direct mail are less effective. Buyers are rising above the noise. They are empowered and more informed.

Some numbers: 90% of buy start with a search and 30% (and rising quickly) is done via social media. 40% and rising is done via mobile.

People don't search in Google and social media about you. They have a question and are looking for answers. "People don't buy into y…

What is a story? The shortest story is: For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn. By Ernest Hemingway.

The difference between storytelling and online storytelling: in online storytelling you have lots of tech tools to tell your story. (YouTube is the number 1 way to tell and sell stories.)

Why stories? Because our brains like them, says Joep. We can remember stories and a good story touches us. Therefore authenticity is key in stories. Joep points to several examples of 'stories' and stories on the web.

Joep finished his breakout by sharing different types of stories, like a scenario and synopsis. And examples of the tools that companies can use to tell stories, like infographics, video and photo.

Polle's goal is to change companies to do less with ads and act more. Content is never the end goal. Real people want something and content is the in-between step to get there. Polle showed the KLM Surprise campagne. He learned from that campaign that people loved it, but are also very practical. They want to get things done and, e.g., find their suitecase.
Now, let's talk managers. When working on cool content we need to work on input for their talks at the golf course. Make sure you show them lots of facts and figures, even though this is not what it's really about. The underlying construct is important. Technology forces us to rethink content. And metrics dictates creativity.

Copywriters and content marketeers are in the squeeze between tech, managers and consumers. And there'…

Top-task
management is a method championed by Gerry McGovern to improve and optimize
websites. I’ve been thinking about this method for some time now. I was planning
to start by sharing my understanding and experience with the method. But then I
bumped into a post about the limitations of the top-task management approach by Philippe Parker.
Bottom-line of the post is that top-task management doesn’t work for sites with
which you want to achieve engagement.

Top-tasks vs. engagement I’m sure
the top-task approach can work in some cases, but I see too many consultants
always applying this method. Top-task management tries to make something
simple when it can be simple. But I see it applied to websites when the need is
complex as well. A task is clean and can
usually be clearly described. But real work like searching, learning,
listening, processing is messy. Parker says: tasks are not the only thing people
come to the site for. He goes on to say ‘engagement’ is the other reason why
peopl…

I use Flipboard to interact with my Twitter Lists (3 lists) and Google+. I also consume the HBR-, National Geographic-, Vimeo-, and Instagram-feed there. I read interesting tweets right away or email them to my inbox to read them later.I view my Twitter search every now-and-then on Twitter.com. But will move that to Flipboard as well after reading Oscar’s post.I read my feeds in Google Reader. If I want to read a post I star it and make sure I find time during the day/week to read the starred items. When I know I’ll be offline and h…

Most people know the history of the intranet. And if you’re older you will have experienced its history. Many organization that have had an intranet for years are looking for ways towards a modern and future-ready intranet. But what is the future of the intranet? Many intranet experts and organizations are thinking about this question. Are we eventually going to be apply to wear the intranet?

From intranet to social intranet
There’s lots of talk about using social media within organizations. In short this is also called the ‘social intranet’. The intention is to have an intranet that is more than most are used to: news, procedures, who-is-who and the restaurant menu. A ‘social intranet’ should make us forget the old intranet. The old intranet that often hardly supports the way employees do their daily work. From intranet to digital workplace
For this reason the new intranet is also called the ‘digital workplace’ more and more. A new name to help us forget the old intranet and sell t…

It’s Blog Action Dayagain! And this year’s topic is ‘The Power of We’. What a great topic, don’t you think?

The Power of We
The Power of We is what lots of us are experiencing when we use social media. The fascinating reality that lots of people sharing what they think can change and create things. And if sharing doesn’t create things it can catalyze, support and accelerate it.
Just look at what Wikipedia has done for us. And what a simple tweet or lots of tweets can do. Or how a blogpost can trigger and inspire.
I don’t think we’ve tapped into the full possibilities of the Power of We yet. To me the key is to ask more questions. It’s something we should do, but I’ll just start with myself and encourage others to do the same. Why more questions? Good questions level us with others. It gives others a chance to relate to us and help us. We need more questions inside organizations, between organizations, from (local) government to the people, etc.

Recently I had the privilege to give a guest lecture at the Hogeschool Arnhem & Nijmegen (college-level) about Enterprise 2.0. Just like last year I asked the students which social media tools they use and why. I like asking them this question, because it gives me some insight in adoption rates of tools and usage patterns.

Last years results can be found here. I'll share this year's results below. Of the 24 students I had in my classes:

24 have a Twitter account, 6 actively use it and 2 others only consume tweets.24 have a Hyves account (Dutch social network, comparable to Facebook), 1 uses it actively and some go there every now-and-then.Facebook is clearly taking over Hyves, with 20 accounts in the classes and they use it actively. 14 only consume Facebook updates.Only 2 have a Foursquare account and use it actively.6 have a Google+ account and none of them use it.LinkedIn: 16 have an account, 5 use it actively.They all have to blog for these classes. Only 2 already had …

You've probably heard of Caine and his arcade. If you have't please go and watch the 1st and 2nd video (below) about Caine. It's an inspirational and fun story. It reminds us how special, creative and fun kids are.

After watching the 2nd video I was wondering what we learn from these video's. What are the lessons for 'big people'? These are some of the things I came up with:The video's reminded me that we all were once kids. And that even at an older age, it's importance to keep on being child-like. Just look at all the grown-up people that came to the arcade...Building things is an extremely important way to learn and get feedback. Caine built things because he liked to and hoped others would as well. The filmer taped the story because he liked what Caine had built and hoped others would as well. Etc.We need other people to be effective. Caine built the arcade, the filmer shared the s…

SharePoint is used by manycompanies. Lots of them are struggling to use it strategically. How can SharePoint become essential for our organization? How can organizations drive SharePoint adoption? These are questions I hear a lot from customers.

There are many SharePoint conferences out there. Do we really need another one? My colleagues and I at Entopic found many conferences address SharePoint from a technology and developer perspective. Which is great. There is clearly a market for this. However, we wondered if there are also conferences that address the business- and user-side of SharePoint. We found only a couple world-wide. For this reason we thought it would be good to organize a SharePoint conference with a business focus. And apparently more people were looking for something like this. There were 300+ attendees.

Symon Garfield kicked off the conference with a keynote about how to implement SharePoint successfully. Symon discussed several reasons why implementations fail. Like…

What is the best way to benchmark your intranet? How can you learn from other intranets?

Comparing intranets
There are many ways to find intranet inspiration. Among others you can: Have your intranet assessed by an intranet expertRead a good book about intranetVisit organizations that have a (beautiful) intranetVisit a conference or workshop about intranetJoin online or offline intranet networking groups
This list doesn’t mention listening to your users, because I assume you're already doing that… Digital Workplace Survey 2013
Another way to learn from others is to join intranet surveys. The most well-known survey is Jane McConnell’s. Jane is a well-known intranet expert. Jane’s internal research on intranet has been going on for years now. The scope of her research used to be intranet and has broadened to the digital workplace. Many organizations participate in her research. The survey is broad and deep. Filling out the survey takes about an hour of your time. For this hour of your…

Do you know more than 150 people? You probably don't. And do you have more than 150 friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter? You probably do. But are they really your friend? Do you really know all 150 of them? I don't think so.

A long time ago I ran into Robert Dunbar's research on social networks. I wrote several posts about Dunbar's number and have been collecting interesting links as well. Just recently Dunbar was interviewed by Technology Review about his number and social networks.
What is Dunbar's number about? His research basically showed...
...that humans have the cognitive capacity to maintain about 150 stable social relationships.
The first time I read this I thought: What?! But it's is now my experience this is true. Even for social media friends and followers. I follow way more that 150 people, but I know and truly engage with 150-300 of them.
Of course Technology Review was also wondering if Dunbar himself still thinks his number still ho…

Is email here to stay or will it die? Will it die because social media is here or will something else replace email?
Recently Steve Dale wrote an interesting post about this topic. It's titled 'Email is dead: long live email!'. It was discussed on G+ and the blogpost itself has many interesting comments. I thought I'd share my comments here as well. Please read Steve's post first. I think it's an important post for social business people.

Steve lists several reasons to use (and keep on using) email: Email arrives near instantaneously. It can be accessed from almost anywhere. It brings not just text, but pictures, documents, links, and more.Email is great for non-urgent communication. Things that don’t require an immediate response that others can deal with on their schedule.Email can provide a powerful documentation trail. Unlike text messages or phone calls, email provides an authenticated audit trail of past communication. It is hard to deny past actions and …

Just before the weekend I wanted to share this interesting 10 minute talk with you about hierarchies and networks. For one because it's just fascinating to watch how RSA visualizes this talk. Secondly because of the talk itself.Manual Lima's talk about "The power of networks" is fascinating. He gives an overview of how we used to try to structure everything in hierarchies and trees, because we like order and simplicity. And how we now shift to using networks more because trees simply can't describe reality. Knowledge, species, bacteria, our brain, our body, societies, etc. are highly connected. He wraps up his talk by asking if there is a universal structure? Well, do you think there is one?

Of course there has been lots of thinking and talking about what this means for organizations, people and technology. The shift Lima describes is the shift 'social business' and 'enterprise 2.0' is describing. And it's the shift social technology is trying…

“Why can't we use LinkedIn for our intranet? At least it works, our intranet doesn't.” Maybe you considered this or heard it in your organization. The question intrigues me and I think we will hear it more and more in the coming years. What do you say in response to this question as internal or external consultant, Communications or IT manager? I'd like to share my thoughts in this post.

Dissatisfied about IT
The intranet is changing rapidly. The internet provides all kinds of free tools, like Dropbox, Yammer and Google Drive. More and more people are getting used to sharing (versions of) documents, online collaboration, sharing short messages, setting up and maintaining a personal profile, etc. Employees are often dissatisfied about the internal IT-tools and content-focused intranets. These tools cannot compete with the functionality we have on the internet.Free tools as intranet
More and more employees are openly, and sometimes secretly, using free internet tools to ge…

I used to work for a large organization. One of the things that intrigued me most when working for that company is how little questions were asked. It seems like everybody was looking for ways to create a need and get people to ask them a question.

The strange thing about looking for needs and questions is that I look for the ones that I can answer.

In my work as a consultant I experience the complete opposite. Working for an organization always starts with a need, a question. Often I have to help the organization articulate the need and detail the question, but the need and question is there.

As a consultant the big question is: do I or the organization I work for have what it takes to address the need and answer the question.

To me this is a huge difference. Does this relate to your experience as a consultant or employee working for an organization?

One of the podcasts I listen to regularly is HBR Ideacast. Recently Paul Polman, Unilever's CEO, was interviewed. I thought the interview was great and inspiration. You can find the podcast and transcript here.

There's lots of talk about social business lately. What does it mean? How can it be done? And how does it relate to new social tools? I like the way some are stressing social business as human business. Businesses consist of humans and should do what is good for humans inside and outside of the company.

The interview with Polman give a short insight into what a human business could or should be. A human business is a responsible business. It takes it's responsibility for the world, environment and humans in general. This has to do with how they produce products and services, the packaging they choose, the way they take care of employees and partners, etc. Polman went even further by stating that responsibility and sustainability comes before money and shareholder val…

I really enjoy going to conferences. Listening to other people’s or organization’s experiences helps me think. Good talks and breakout sessions inspire me and trigger me to try the approaches as well. Bad talks help me sort out what my convictions are and what my approach would be. Conferences are also great for meeting up with people I already know and meeting new, interesting people. In short, conferences help me learn.

One of the great use cases for social media is conferences. I really enjoy social media before, during and after conferences. Before conferences social media is great to find out who’s coming and what other people are expecting of the conference. Letting people know you’ll be at the conference gives people who couldn’t attend a way to experience the conference anyways by following your tweets and blogposts. After conferences social media is great to evaluate: thank the conference organization, provide feedback about the conference and thank participants.

Recently listened to this keynote by Euan Semple at the 'State of the Net' conference. I thought it was a very good and insightful talk. It puts social media into perspective and helps you think about the underlying concepts of the internet.

Semple basically starts out with the difference between the old(er) web 2.0 and new web
2.0 world. In other words: it started with blogging and now we have Facebook and Twitter. I like how he tells about how nervous he was when he published his first blogpost. (I can relate to that...) But goes on to stress how important it is for us personally and for organizations to find their voice (- remember the Cluetrain Manifesto?). We have to move away from the industrialization of our worklives.
On the other hand Semple acknowledges that asking people to say what they think, should never be underestimated. It's a big step for many.
Semple wraps his talk with a nice quote from David Weinberger: Love is what makes the internet hang together,
th…

Based on a survey of business managers, problematic areas around business content collaboration were signaled and directions for solutions are given in the report.

Much of today's collaboration still happens in email. 96% says they use email for internal content sharing and 92% for sharing with externals (and this does not correlate with age...).

Some companies like Atos are (planning on) banning email. Businesses are looking for ways to increase employee "productivity, accommodate or counter email limitations, and reduce costs". If a new tool addresses these topics it will probably be adopted quickly.

Searching and tracking documents is still a big problem for companies. Access or lack thereof to content is also an…

Harold Jarche has a great blog and shares a lot of his thinking on old HR and old learning and what social learning could bring to organizations. Recently he had a post titled 'Work is learning and learning it the work' that got me thinking.

He basically opposed against pulling learning and work out of each other, as it seems to be in many companies. This is shown by the fact that most companies have someone responsible for learning (HR manager or Learning & Development manager) and formal (online) training.

Learning should be the work. Maybe it's even stronger: Learning is the work. Harold challenges us to actively observe how people are learning to do their job right now.

But why is this so hard for companies? I've written about Peter Senge's book before. Hardly any companies I know can truly be called a learning organization. And Senge's book has been out for more than 20 years now...

Many companies are looking into social tools for their internal organization. Lots of others just select what related companies have chosen. Hoping this is the right choice.

As with selecting content management systems, many struggle to select a social platform. There are so many tools out there and they all say they can help you support internal networks. How to choose the right one? Is there a right one? Does the success of a tool elsewhere mean it will also be successful in the company you work for?

The Social Now conference in Porto (June 26-27), organized by Knowman, addressed these questions. And it did so in a unique way. Basically the idea was to have social tool vendors present based on a concrete company case that wanted to move forward in knowledge sharing, idea management and collaborative project work. The vendors were asked to share their approach in 20 minutes and then an expert panel helped the company ask the right questions to the vendors. Many brave vendors present…